Thursday, October 10, 2019

Non-Hostile Environment

I've heard this Janet Kay reggae track at various times over the last few weeks.  It's popped up on mixes, on radio shows.  When I heard it, I assumed it was some obscure dusty thing that's been rediscovered somehow. I mean, it does sound a bit off, and Tom Ravenscroft is playing it on 6 Music.  Then I looked it up and it turns out it was #2 in the UK in 1979!  #2!!  A hit, in other words, and Janet Kay, the singer, was on Top of the Pops

This wouldn't be a very big deal, but given everything that's in the news these days, the hostility and anger, and how important identity, race, background, has seemingly become (at least online), it's kind of cool to go back to 1979 and a time when things were probably pretty bad, race-wise, and yet this slightly strange track made it all the way to #2 in the UK (it was apparently a hit around Europe too).  What does it mean?  I don't know to be honest... maybe that it doesn't have to be this way, that there are better parts of our nature we should be tapping into?  Or maybe it just means that a good pop song can transcend boundaries -- or at least it used to be able to.  Is pop culture the answer to our troubles?  It's possible (as an aside, when I looked up #TopBoy on Twitter, I came across quite a few users with England flag emojis in their name who'd enjoyed the show...). 

It also reminds me of just how important Black music is to pop music in general.  Especially in the US and UK, one could argue that without Black music there'd be no pop music, no rock music, no dance music, nothing; we'd be listening to skiffle boards, country (maybe?), folk, and who knows what else.  It'd be pretty shit.  So check out this video -- I hope it makes you smile. 



Also, on Tom Ravenscroft, I heard Metronomy do a live track and I have to say it sounded like... something from Flight of the Conchords.  And I like Metronomy.  I wonder if it's meant to be funny?  The official version actually sounds pretty good:






Saturday, July 6, 2019

Tunes from earthquake/KCRW drive

So during last night's earthquake at 8:19pm I was having a very pleasant and relaxing drive to Pasadena, listening to...KCRW. Of course. They were playing these tunes back-to-back, and unlike the day before, I completely didn't feel or notice the earthquake, probably because I was so attracted to the music.

So first up was this tune (right as the earthquake happened) - really nice and smooth, one of the producers is Machinedrum. "Ocean Ppl" by J-E-T-S - sort of hard to find!



Next was this, "Weekend en Casa" by Intermittent:



My roommate phoned me and as I was driving on the 110 about to go through downtown, I didn't pick up, and also because this tune started playing. Really enjoyed this one. I realize now that the DJ was playing a joke - nice one DJ! I had no idea, later I heard the voicemail from the roomie, asking if I was alright post-earthquake (as I had no idea what to do, the day before, like a typical stupid outsider to Los Angeles). Her Mum texted me too. Hilarious. Anyway - this is a really nice one! "Faultline" - it's a remix, interestingly it seems DEDE is from Grizzly Bear.

This one is my favourite of the bunch of course. Great house tune. Makes me wanna clap my hands. Hope to DJ this tune soon! Will be playing this on repeat a lot, but I don't think my neighbours will mind.



This one was the last tune I heard as my drive ended. Thanks KCRW for distracting me during the earthquake and for all of this new music!

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Is it over?

Over the last day or two I've been thinking about the process of making music, especially dance music, genres, and what it all means now.

When I first heard dance music in the early 90's (or was it the late 80's?) it did feel like "the future", and later on I bought into the idea that it was future music.  It kept evolving too, it didn't stay still, and I got into the mutations that came through, like jungle, garage, and then dubstep.  But I'm trying and I really can't think of a new genre or mutation that really got anyone's attention after dubstep?  I know there are always new micro-genres and distinctions, and there's EDM, which is basically an idiotic label for nothing, it's not new.  But there's nothing I hear now that seems really new or ground-breaking, and definitely nothing is having a massive impact like the genres mentioned above.

So is dance-music actually like rock music now?  Where people are just making their own take on what's gone before?  I feel like that's what's happening and that electronic dance music isn't really the music of the future anymore, and I don't think anything's replaced it.  That makes me a bit sad, especially as I've taken up producing my own dance music as a hobby.  Via that I realised that there haven't really been that many innovations in the sound or the equipment since the 90's, other than most of the process going "in the box" (ie being done solely on computers).  The people I come across online seem to mostly festishize old sounds and equipment too, new takes on old drum machines.

All this doesn't mean that good music won't be made, and isn't being made.  But I just think that thrilling edge has been lost, where I felt like what was being made and heard had never been done before.  I mean, imagine the feeling of hearing the first house record, or the first jungle record?  That's not happening any more; hopefully it will happen again, but there are no guarantees.

For me this means I need to get back to viewing my own producing as a hobby to be enjoyed -- no need to overthink it, just have fun.

Switching it up, after a long time, here's a commute tune from this morning's BBC 6 music with Tom Ravenscroft.  Bloody good it is too.  I think at this time anything I blog will be slightly biased by the fact that I'm looking forward to putting together a massive tAO playlist soon!